Objects in many subject matter areas are related to each other in many different ways. For example, a server space involves an operating system, a server hardware platform, a virtualization hypervisor, a data center environment, a clustering solution, or some combination of these and other features. For example, a data processing system is related to an operating system and a type of hardware; and a type of hardware is related to a type of processor, a hypervisor, a data processing environment, and a cluster. A hypervisor can be of various types; a data processing environment can be of various configurations; and a cluster can use any of the various clustering solutions.
As another example, a phone can be of different sizes. A phone can also be of different colors. A phone can also have different configurations of memory and other features.
A dimension is a feature or another object to which an object is related, on which the object depends, or which describes all or a part of the object. For example, when the object is a server space, the operating system executing in that server space, the hardware platform deployed in that server space, the hypervisor in use with that server space, the clustering solution in use with that server space, and the type of data processing environment in which that server space participates are each a dimension of the server space. Similarly, when a phone is the object, the size, the color, and the memory of the phone are each a dimension of the phone.
A dimension can have dimension members. For example, the dimension members of an operating system dimension can be the specific operating systems that can be used. Accordingly, for a server space object, Windows™, AIX™ Linux™, PowerLinux™, Solaris™, HP-UX™ and zLinux™ are some example dimension members of a dimension that is the operating system (the trademarks are the property of their respective owners). Similarly, Intel™, zSeries™, PureAS™, Cisco UCS™, VCE vBlock™, and PureFlex™ are some example dimension members of a dimension that is the hardware platform (the trademarks are the property of their respective owners). Similarly, VMware™, PowerVM™, PowerKVM™, KVM™, Hyper RHEV™, Xenserver™, Z/VM™ and others are some example dimension members of a dimension that is the hypervisor (the trademarks are the property of their respective owners). MSCS™, Veritas™, Power HA™, and Oracle RAC™ are some example dimension members of a dimension that is the clustering solution (the trademarks are the property of their respective owners). Similarly, public cloud, private cloud, CMS™ and Softlayer™ are some example dimension members of a dimension that is the data processing environment (the trademarks are the property of their respective owners).
In a like manner, a phone object can have small, medium, and large as some example dimension members for the dimension that is the size of the phone. Red, blue, green, and orange can be some example dimension members for the dimension that is the color of the phone. 16 Gigabytes (GB), and 32 GB can be some example dimension members for the dimension that is the memory or storage space in the phone.